"What we imagined were our 'instincts' were instead just intelligent, informed reactions. Things we had figured out. Along the way, we also discovered that those reactions were polluted by a hodgepodge of wishful thinking, moralistic biases, contagious fads, personal history, and old (disproven) psychology—all at the expense of common sense." (p. 6)

"'Nurture shock' refers to the panic that the mythical fountain of knowledge is not magically kicking in at all." (p. 6)

"The central premise of this book is that many of modern society's strategies for nurturing children are in fact backfiring—because key twists in the science have been overlooked." (p. 6)

"Emphasizing effort gives children a variable they can control...emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the children's control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure." (p. 15)

"Only children under the age of seven take praise at face value. Older...